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Living with Endangered Languages in the Information AgePost an Event »
Read Our Review »Root Division
January 7 - January 31, 2015Info
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http://www.rootdivision.org/
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(415) 863-7668
Root Division presents Living with Endangered Languages in the Information Age, an exhibition of 30 contemporary artists addressing dwindling diversity in international languages. Studies show that fifty percent of the world’s 7,000 languages will disappear by the end of the 21st century, and that on average, a language dies or goes extinct every two weeks when its last speaker dies.
What happens when a language vanishes? Is technology exacerbating the demise of languages or abating the process of extinction? Living with Endangered Languages in the Information Age addresses this looming language crisis covering six continents and 30 languages, many of which are critically endangered or no longer spoken. Utilizing multidisciplinary practices, conceptual approaches, and a variety of new media the artists in this exhibition explore the loss of spoken languages, as well as the rise and fall of artificial languages, square notes once associated with Gregorian chants, and sign language in America.
Curator Hanna Regev aims to “shed a lasting impression on the plight among speakers of endangered languages, the heroic efforts of linguists, anthropologists, and community leaders who are on a mission to save them from total extinction. The cause has a chance to appeal to the brightest minds of an emerging generation of technologists and entrepreneurs who are creating tools that actually lead to preservation and revitalization of certain languages.” Regev holds an M.A. in Museum Studies and M.A. in Modern European History from San Francisco State University. Her curatorial projects have been featured at the Zero1 Biennial, SOMArts, and the Center for the Book among others.
The exhibition will be supplemented by an additional evening of performance and conversation on Thursday, January 15, entitled Explorations into the Rise and Fall of Sign and Artificial Languages. This event will be translated in ASL and is intended fro audiences of all hearing ability. This program will feature a live performance by Resonant Shift, a media dance collaboration by Gregory P Dawson & Kadet Kuhne, as well as a panel discussion with Eric Theise, PhD, Geospatial Web Application Developer, and Scott Kidall, New Media Artist, moderated by Jonathon Keats.
Discussion from 6:00- 7:30 pm / Performance: 7:30 pm.